


Reciprocal

by a_mere_trifle



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Female Friendship, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Music, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 15:49:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_mere_trifle/pseuds/a_mere_trifle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You open the door, slowly, carefully; it glides silently on its hinges as you poke your head through. She is sitting in the middle of the round, many-windowed room, like a princess in a tower, shelves of sheet music and violin-cases taking up all the space in between. This has got to be her music room. Why have you never seen it before?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reciprocal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gazetteAuteur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gazetteAuteur/gifts).



> I saw the prompt:  
>  _Rose on violin, Jade on bass (electric or otherwise). Do the musical thing. Bonus points if a specific song inspires the work._  
>  and was reminded of certain headcanony things.
> 
> I did have a song in mind, though it's not originally violin/bass-- here is [a mellower version](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS--hp1mFYA) and [one with some more bells and whistles, as it were](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrgEoov-RBc). Feel free to imagine another/your own, though :D

\--

It's always strange, to you, visiting Rose's house. There are certain design aspects that they share-- a certain color palette, a certain outlandish architecture. And yet, yours is more rustic and playful, hers more urbane and esoteric, as Rose once put it herself. You (and your families too!) are so different-- and yet, underneath those veneers, so the same.

You didn't tell her you were coming; you usually try to, just because it seems like she wants to know, but you're friends, and you know she won't get too angry. You're more than close enough to be allowed this, and you don't really like it when she prepares for your arrival. She makes such a huge formal thing of it, and you're never sure if she thinks that's what friends do or if it's some weird ironic display of affection. The Lalonde-Striders are all weird, but you love them anyway. Your family is plenty weird too!

It's a big house, really too big for them, though you really, seriously shouldn't be throwing stones about that. The thing is, you don't know it that well, and when you think about it you have no idea where she spends her time. Or what the layout of half the place is, really!

You wander through the sunlit halls, running your hands along the wood paneling, listening for any signs of life. There might be something-- a sound of music, still quite faint. The violin; you know she plays.

You follow your ears, eyes closed, banging into only a wall or two on your way; your hearing's sharper than it used to be. You can't place the melody; it doesn't sound classical, you think, which is more her usual fare. Not quite as intricate as usual, maybe, but definitely her sort of melancholy.

It's pretty, though, haunting and aching. It makes your heart pang and a shiver run down your spine; and, as you climb the spiral stairs of the tower, you start worrying that she's seriously hurt.

You open the door, slowly, carefully; it glides silently on its hinges as you poke your head through. She is sitting in the middle of the round, many-windowed room, like a princess in a tower, shelves of sheet music and violin-cases taking up all the space in between. This has got to be her music room.

You wonder for a moment why you've never seen this place before, why she's never let you in, but then you remember you told her about it, the bass you could never more than half-play again, and realize she was probably doing you a kindness, or trying to. She might have thought it would serve as a reminder, but it isn't at all; you're too distracted by watching her to be reminded of anything. You don't know a whole lot about the violin, about any of the technical details a professional might critique, but it sounds beautiful to you, poised and exquisitely measured and perfect. You'd never really known how _good_ she was at this before, and you don't at all want her to stop.

So of course she does, abruptly, with a frustrated sigh; what she could find inadequate about that performance you don't know, but she always did aim for perfection. She turns, moving to put her violin back in its case-- and then she sees you at the door, and hesitates, mid-motion.

"That was wonderful," you say. "I've never heard it before!"

"Well, when barging into friends' houses without invitation, I'd wager one would be vary likely to hear things one has never heard before." She frowns a little, but you're not worried; you know this is way down on your list of past transgressions.

"Really, what is it?" you ask, wandering further in. You look up at the ceiling, wondering how well it carries sound; the walls surely muffle it, given the time you had tracing the music here.

"...I don't know," she says.

"Don't know?" You blink, pausing in your skimming of her shelves. "Were you just making it up now?"

"Not exactly." She frowns a little more; that's her reluctant frown, the one she wears when there's something she doesn't really want to admit to. You're not sure if she's gotten smarter, or if you've gotten cleverer, but most of the time she gives in.

As she does now: "I used to hear it in the Void," she says, and it actually takes you a few seconds to remember what that means.

"With the Old Ones and everything? Well, no wonder it's sad!" You consider the idea for a moment. "But I'd expect it to be more, creepy and dischordant and things."

"It wasn't one of Theirs." She hesitates again, fingers playing along the bow; _Come on_ , you think at her, but don't dare say. "I'm not sure where it came from, really."

"But who else could it have been, then?" You remember enough about the Void to know that one of the few things anyone could reliably know about it was how sparsely it was populated.

She takes a breath, still wary for some reason you don't understand; and she says, "That's partly a lie."

She looks you in the eyes, and she says, "The songs in there are apt to drive one mad, you understand. I believe the bleed-through of those dreams might be what prompted me to take up music in the first place. It is difficult to combat such music with one's own; but fortunately it's true, that one's own thoughts hold dominion in one's head, even if they are subsumed temporarily. At any rate, when I felt I could winnow no more knowledge from Their singing, I would begin a song of my own."

"So you did make it up yourself," you say, nodding. "I thought so. It's really you. And really beautiful! But why didn't you just say?"

She bites her lip, for just a momentl and she says, "That is how it went the first time I consciously walked those paths. But the second time-- I heard a voice echoing my own."

"Echoes?" You frown. "There are echoes in there?" There shouldn't be, you know.

She shakes her head. "I thought at first that was what it must be, even when the timing differed from my own; but then the voice started playing harmony, and then I couldn't fool myself at all."

"Weird time stuff?" you suggest. "It works strangely there-- well, everywhere we've been, really--"

"I don't think so," she says. "I don't think the voice was mine. I wasn't sure, at first; because it was very, very similar. But it was not my own."

"Your mom's?" you suggest. "I know she was on Derse too--"

"I asked," she says. "She heard the full version of the song. But she swears she never sang, and her alcoholic antics had not been kind to her voice."

"Full version?" you ask; and, oddly, she smiles a little at that, which is very good, but strange given how sad and edgy she's seemed about it.

"When Dave awoke," she says, "he heard it too. And added his own touches as well. If he heard any other unsourced accompiament, he never said-- but then, he wouldn't."

"No," you agree, after a moment's thought. "Ghost drums or something? He probably wouldn't say anything at all."

"So it is a mystery unsolved, and it bothers me," she says. "Not that I think it's likely to come back to haunt us; I suspect we're just as safe. It just seems that... there were things going on, back then, that we still don't know about. Lost worlds, lost universes, that we will never understand. That no one will ever recover, except in echoes."

She looks down at her violin, and picks it back up. "Also," she says, "it just doesn't sound right anymore without the harmony."

She starts to play again; and after a few moments, you reach into your captchalogue for a card you haven't touched in months.

You switch the atomic bass to its default setting, with only a soft sigh at the knowledge that its advanced setting is now useless. You reach for the strings, and realize, a little uncomfortably, that your arms are longer now; you should really rejigger the strings, now that you can, but you don't want to deal with that right now. You shift your arm into position, a little uncomfortably, and when she slides into the next "verse", you begin to play.

You keep it simple, the first round; you're quick to learn music, but you want to hear this one a little better before you're sure of yourself. You have to think, that first iteration, quick on your feet, and you realize it's the first time you've ever played with her-- now you think of it, you're less and less sure you ever played with anyone. Had your grandfather played? Had John brought along a piano?

Either way, it feels that new, and you're finding you like it an awful lot.

She plays over the motif again, and you take more liberties this time, crafting an intricate baseline that makes her twitch her lips just a little, into a smile. You go a little crazy, after that; you try harmonizing with her, throwing in runs and arpeggios, and you're not sure how many measures it takes you to realize she's stopped playing-- or how many repetitions you'd gone through before.

She's smiling at you, though, and it occurs to you to wonder just how much of this was a scheme. Surely she couldn't have predicted you coming today, you know for sure her uneasiness about the song is genuine-- but that second time she took up her violin, that remark about how it just didn't sound the same alone-- had she known you wouldn't be able to stay silent?

More importantly, you wonder, does it matter?

"You like duets, hmm?" she says, her smile a little smug. Okay, probably she planned it.

"Apparently!" you answer, not holding that against her. It worked, after all. "But, it probably still wasn't the same."

"No," she agrees, calmly. "But it was better."

You laugh softly, looking down at your bass. "Yeah," you say, and recaptchalogue it.

"...Anyway!" you chirp, grinning as she leans just slightly back in alarm. "Time for what I really came here for!"

"And that would be?" she asks-- and pales when you pull out a set of tickets. "Tell me you didn't. Jade, _tell me you didn't_."

"Squiddlefriends Live!" you crow. "It will be _awesome_."

"That travesty of a remake? Live-action? _Squid with wings_?" She shakes her head. "Jade, you can't. The Geneva Convention."

"I don't think my island ever signed that!" Your grin grows wider; Rose is too clever not to need a good shake-up once in a while, and she's obviously overdue. "Besides, I told John and Dave you'd come."

She buries her head in her hands. "Dave, I understand. This will be the height of irony. But John? What did you tell him, that Nick Cage would be there?"

You flinch, and her eyes widen. "Jade, _Jade_ , surely you wouldn't be so cruel as to lie like that... Oh my God. You wouldn't be so cruel as to lie like that. Jade, _no!_ "

"Oh, hush, it'll be good for you," you say, leaning forward to take her arm. "Now come on! This is a prime opportunity for playing dress-up!"

"You realize I'll insist on wearing black?" She glares at you, as you pull her down the stairs.

"I never got the whole black lipstick thing, but whatever make you happy," you answer, heading for her room.

" _How is this about making me happy?_ "

You don't bother answering, but it really is; she will be out of her house, she will be with friends, and she will have something to complain about for months. She needs distractions from her past, sometimes, just like you do, and it's the least you can do for her, to be sure.

She would do the same for you, and has, and you do not know where you would be without it.

You know she's not a mindreader, was only a 'Seer' relatively briefly, but sometimes she makes you wonder; because she pauses on the stairs, turning around, and says, "Do you think they've realized yet just how alike we really are?"

"Nah," you say, grinning. "You make a great distraction."

"Well, then," she says. "I suppose I can endure this indignity by remembering that _my_ painful, misguided attempt to improve your situation shall be much, much worse."

You just smile, and say, "It's a date!"

\--


End file.
